Cash-Cost Issues at Agnico-Eagle?

With gold rallying to more than $1,200 an ounce, Cramer said investors "absolutely must have" some of the precious metal in their portfolio. Gold is an insurance policy against inflation and economic chaos, he said, and it tends to go higher when everything else gets hammered, even though that wasn't the case Tuesday.

The easiest way to play gold, he explained, is with the SPDR Gold Shares exchange-traded fund. Cramer likes this ETF because it owns gold bullion, the actual physical bricks of gold, and does a "terrific job" of tracking its price.

For those willing to take on additional risk, Cramer suggests the gold miners, namely Agnico-Eagle Mines . Cramer last recommended the Toronto-based company on April 29 when it was trading at $63.77. Since then, the stock has dropped about $3, but Cramer said its long-term record is "still phenomenal." Over the past five years, the stock is up 363% while the GLD posted a 172% gain during the same time period.

Agnico-Eagle not only benefits from rising gold prices, Cramer said, it is also "aggressively" producing more gold by opening new mines. While AEM had suffered from delays and higher costs in the past, it reported strong second-quarter results on July 28. It produced a 6-cent earnings beat off a 39-cent basis with total gold production amounting to 257,700 ounces and cash costs of $487 an ounce. It also maintained guidance for up to 1.1 million ounces of production in 2010, which more than doubles its production of gold in 2009.

Cramer called the company's production growth "absolutely salacious." To talk about that, as well as some cash-cost issues that popped up at two new mines, Cramer spoke with CEO Sean Boyd.